


The Little Merman

by Sheogorath



Category: Original Work
Genre: AR, Adaptation, M/M, Mpreg, Slash, fairytale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 20:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheogorath/pseuds/Sheogorath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You know when Hans Christian Andersen wrote 'The Little Mermaid'? Well, he got a few details wrong. Here's what <i>really</i> happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Merman

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I changed a few things here and there. Why? Because I wanted my Disney ending, goddamnit!

## The Little Merman 

Far out in the ocean, the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower and as clear as the purest glass. However, it is very deep too. It goes down deeper than any anchor rope will go, and many, many steeples would have to be stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the surface of the sea. It is down there that the sea folk live.

Now don't suppose that there are only bare white sands at the bottom of the sea. No indeed! The most marvelous trees and flowers grow down there, with such pliant stalks and leaves that the least stir in the water makes them move about as though they were alive. All sorts of fish, large and small, dart among the branches, just as birds flit through the trees up here. From the deepest spot in the ocean rises the palace of the sea king. Its walls are made of coral and its high pointed windows of the clearest amber, but the roof is made of mussel shells that open and shut with the tide. This is a wonderful sight to see, for every shell holds glistening pearls, any one of which would be the pride of a queen's crown.

The sea king down there, Poseidon, had been a widower for years, and his old mother ran the palace for him. She was a clever woman, but very proud of her noble birth. Therefore she flaunted twelve oysters on her tail while the other ladies of the court were only allowed to wear six. Except for this, she was an altogether praiseworthy person, particularly so because she was extremely fond of her grandchildren, the little sea princesses and the sea prince. They were six lovely siblings, but the youngest, the only son, was the most gorgeous of them all. His skin was as soft and strong as moleskin, his eyes were the dark blue of the deep sea, and his shoulder-length hair was the same rich glossy brown as horse chestnuts, but like all the others, he had no feet. His body ended in a fish tail.

The whole day long they used to play in the palace, down in the great halls where live flowers grew on the walls. Whenever the high amber windows were thrown open the fish would swim in, just as swallows dart into our rooms when we open the windows. The difference was that these fish, now, would swim right up to the royal children to eat out of their hands and let themselves be petted.

Outside the palace was a large garden, with flaming red and deep-blue trees. Their fruit glittered like gold, and their blossoms flamed like fire on their constantly waving stalks. The soil was very fine sand indeed, but as blue as burning brimstone. A strange blue veil lay over everything down there. You would have thought yourself aloft in the air with only the blue sky above and beneath you, rather than down at the bottom of the sea. When there was a dead calm, you could just see the sun, like a scarlet flower with light streaming from its calyx.

Each royal child had their own small garden plot, where they could dig and plant whatever they liked. One of them made her little flower bed in the shape of a whale, another thought it neater to shape hers like a little mermaid, but the prince made his as round as the sun, and there he grew only plants which were as red as the sun itself. He was an unusual boy, quiet and wistful, and when his sisters decorated their gardens with all kinds of odd things they had found in sunken ships, he would allow nothing in his except plants as red as the sun and a pretty marble statue. This figure of a handsome boy, carved in pure white marble, had sunk down to the bottom of the sea from some ship that was wrecked. Beside the statue he planted a rose-colored weeping willow tree, which thrived so well that its graceful branches shaded the statue and hung down to the blue sand, where their shadows took on a violet tint, and swayed as the branches swayed. It looked as if the roots and the tips of the branches were kissing each other in play.

Nothing gave the young prince such pleasure as to hear about the world of human beings up above them. His old grandmother had to tell him all she knew about ships and cities, and of people and animals. What seemed nicest of all to him was that up on land the flowers were fragrant, for those at the bottom of the sea had no scent. And he thought it was nice that the woods were green, and that the fish you saw among their branches could sing so loud and sweet that it was delightful to hear them. His grandmother had to call the little birds 'fish', or the prince would not have known what she was talking about, for he had never seen a bird.

"When you get to be sixteen, Triton," his grandmother said, "you will be allowed to rise up out of the ocean and sit on the rocks in the moonlight, to watch the great ships sailing by. You will see woods and towns, too."

The following year, one of Triton's sisters would be sixteen, but the others - well, since each royal child was a whole year older than the next, the youngest still had five long years to wait until he could rise up from the water and see what our world was like. However, each sibling promised to tell the others about all that they saw, and what they found most marvelous on their first day. Their grandmother had not told them half enough, and there were so many things that they longed to know about.

The most eager of them all was the youngest, the very one who was so quiet and wistful. Many a night he stood by his open window and looked up through the dark blue water where the fish waved their fins and tails. He could just see the moon and stars. To be sure, their light was quite dim, but looked at through the water, they seemed much bigger than they appear to us. Whenever a cloud-like shadow swept across the palace, Triton knew that it was either a whale swimming overhead, or a ship with many human beings aboard it. Little did those people dream that a handsome young merman was down below, stretching his brown arms up towards the keel of their ship.

When the eldest princess had her sixteenth birthday, she received permission to rise up out of the water. When she got back she had a hundred things to tell her siblings about, but the most marvelous thing of all, she said, was to lie on a sand bar in the moonlight, when the sea was calm, and to gaze at the large city on the shore, where the lights twinkled like hundreds of stars; to listen to music; to hear the chatter and clamor of carriages and people; to see so many church towers and spires; and to hear the ringing bells. Because she could not enter the city, that was just what she most dearly longed to do.

Oh, how intently the youngest royal child listened. After this, whenever he stood at his open window at night and looked up through the dark blue waters, Triton thought of that great city with all of its clatter and clamor, and even fancied that in these depths he could hear the church bells ring.

The next year, his second eldest sister had permission to rise up to the surface and swim wherever she pleased. She came up just at sunset, and she said that this spectacle was the most marvelous sight she had ever seen. The heavens had a golden glow, and as for the clouds - she could not find words to describe their beauty. Splashed with red and tinted with violet, they sailed over her head. However, much faster than the sailing clouds were wild swans in a flock. Like a long white veil trailing above the sea, they flew toward the setting sun. She too swam toward it, but down it went, and all the rose-colored glow faded from the sea and sky.

The following year, Triton's middle sister ascended, and as she was the boldest of them all, she swam up a broad river that flowed into the ocean. She saw gloriously green, vine-colored hills. Palaces and manor houses could be glimpsed through the splendid woods. She heard all the birds sing, and the sun shone so brightly that often she had to dive under the water to cool her burning face. In a small cove she found a whole school of mortal children, paddling about in the water quite naked. She wanted to play with them, but they took fright and ran away. Then along came a little black animal - it was a dog, but she had never seen a dog before. It barked at her so ferociously that she took fright herself, and fled to the open sea. However, never could she forget the splendid woods, the green hills, and the nice children who could swim in the water even though they didn't have fish tails.

The second youngest sister was not so venturesome. She stayed far out among the rough waves, which she said was a marvelous place. You could see all around you for miles and miles, and the heavens up above you were like a vast dome of glass. She had seen ships, but they were so far away that they looked like sea gulls. Playful dolphins had turned somersaults, and monstrous whales had spouted water through their blowholes so that it looked as if hundreds of fountains were playing all around them.

Now the youngest sister had her turn. Her birthday came in the wintertime, so she saw things that none of the others had seen. The sea was a deep green colour, and enormous icebergs drifted about. Each one glistened like a pearl, she said, but they were more lofty than any church steeple built by man. They assumed the most fantastic shapes, and sparkled like diamonds. She had seated herself on the largest one, and all the ships that came sailing by sped away as soon as the frightened sailors saw her there with her long hair blowing in the wind.

In the late evening clouds filled the sky. Thunder cracked and lightning darted across the heavens. Black waves lifted those great bergs of ice on high, where they flashed when the lightning struck.

On all the ships the sails were reefed and there was fear and trembling. However, quietly she sat there, upon her drifting iceberg, and watched the blue forked lightning strike the sea.

Each of the sisters took delight in the lovely new sights when she first rose up to the surface of the sea. However, when they became grown-up girls who were allowed to go wherever they liked, they became indifferent to it. They would become homesick, and within a month, they said that there was no place like the bottom of the sea, where they felt so completely at home.

On many an evening the royal sisters would rise to the surface, arm in arm, all five in a row. They had beautiful voices, more charming than those of any mortal beings. When a storm was brewing, and they anticipated a shipwreck, they would swim before the ship and sing most seductively of how beautiful it was at the bottom of the ocean, trying to overcome the prejudice that the sailors had against coming down to them. However, people could not understand their song, and mistook it for the voice of the storm. Nor was it for them to see the glories of the deep. When their ship went down they were drowned, and it was as dead men that they reached Poseidon's palace.

On the evenings when the mermaids rose through the water like this, arm in arm, their little brother stayed behind all alone, looking after them and wanting to weep. However, the merfolk have no tears, and therefore they suffer so much more.

"Oh, how I do wish I were sixteen!" he would say to himself. "I know I shall love that world up there and all the people who live in it."

And at last, he too came to be sixteen.

"Now I shall have you off my hands, Triton," said his grandmother, the old queen dowager. "Come, let me adorn you like I did your sisters."

On the little man's head she put a magnificent coronet, which was formed of silver and encrusted with rubies. And the old queen allowed eight big oysters to fasten themselves to the prince's tail, as a sign of his high rank.

"But that hurts!" complained the little merman.

"You must put up with a good deal to keep up appearances," his grandmother told him.

Oh, how gladly the prince would have shaken off all these decorations, and laid aside the cumbersome coronet! The red flowers in his garden would likely be much more becoming to him, even as a boy, but he didn't dare to make any changes.

"Goodbye," he said, and up he went through the water, as light and as sparkling as a bubble.

The sun had just gone down when Triton poked his head above the surface, but the clouds still shone like gold and roses, and in the delicately tinted sky sparkled the clear gleam of the evening star. The air was mild and fresh, and the sea lay unruffled. A great three-master lay in view with only one of all its sails set, for there was not even the whisper of a breeze, and the sailors idled about in the rigging and on the yards. There was music and singing on the ship, and as night came on they lighted hundreds of such brightly colored lanterns that one might have thought the flags of all nations were swinging in the air.

The little merman swam right up to the window of the main cabin, and each time he rose with the swell he could peep in through the clear glass panes at the crowd of brilliantly dressed people within. The handsomest of them all was a young Prince with large dark eyes. He could not be more than seventeen years old. It was his birthday, and that was the reason for all the celebration. Up on deck the sailors were dancing, and when the Prince appeared amongst them, a hundred or more rockets flew through the air, making it as bright as day. These startled Triton so badly that he ducked under the water. However, he soon peeped up again, and then it seemed as if all the stars in the sky were falling around him. Never had he seen such fireworks. Great suns spun around, splendid fire-fish floated through the blue air, and all these things were mirrored in the crystal clear sea. It was so brilliantly bright that you could see every little rope of the ship, and the people could be seen distinctly. Oh, how handsome the young Prince was! He laughed, and he smiled and shook people by the hand, while the music rang out into the perfect evening.

It got very late, but the little merman could not take his eyes off the ship and the handsome Prince. The brightly colored lanterns were put out, no more rockets flew through the air, and no more cannon boomed. However, there was a mutter and rumble deep down in the sea, and the swell kept bouncing him up so high that he could look into the cabin.

Now the ship began to sail. Canvas after canvas was spread in the wind, the waves rose high, great clouds gathered, and lightning flashed in the distance. Ah, they were in for a terrible storm, and the mariners made haste to reef the sails. The tall ship pitched and rolled as it sped through the angry sea. The waves rose up like towering black mountains, as if they would break over the masthead, but the swan-like ship plunged into the valleys between such waves, and emerged to ride their lofty heights. To Triton this seemed like good sport, but to the sailors it was nothing of the sort. The ship creaked and labored, thick timbers gave way under the heavy blows, waves broke over the ship, the mainmast snapped in two like a reed, the ship listed over on its side, and water burst into the hold.

Now the little merman saw that people were in peril, and that he himself must take care to avoid the beams and wreckage tossed about by the sea. One moment it would be black as pitch, and he couldn't see a thing. Next moment the lightning would flash so brightly that he could distinguish every soul on board. Everyone was looking out for themselves as best they could. He watched closely for the handsome Prince, and when the ship split in two he saw him sink down in the sea. At first he was overjoyed that the Prince would be with him, but then Triton recalled that human people could not live under the water, and the Prince could only visit the undersea palace as a dead man. No, he should not die! So he swam in amongst all the floating planks and beams, completely forgetting that they might crush him. He dived through the waves and rode their crests, until at length he reached the young Prince, who was no longer able to swim in that raging sea. His arms and legs were exhausted, his beautiful eyes were closing, and he would have died if the little merman had not come to help him. He held his head above water, and let the waves take them wherever the waves went.

At daybreak, when the storm was over, not a trace of the ship was in view. The sun rose out of the waters, red and bright, and its beams seemed to bring the glow of life back to the cheeks of the Prince, but his eyes remained closed. The merman kissed his high and shapely forehead. As he stroked the wet hair into place, it seemed to Triton that the Prince looked like that marble statue in his little garden. He kissed him again and hoped that he would live.

The merman saw dry land rising before him in high blue mountains, topped with snow as glistening white as if a flock of swans were resting there. Down by the shore were splendid green woods, and in the foreground stood a church, or perhaps a convent; he didn't know which, but anyway, it was a building. Orange and lemon trees grew in its garden, and tall palm trees grew beside the gateway. Here the sea formed a little harbor, quite calm and very deep. Fine white sand had been washed up below the cliffs. Triton swam there with the handsome Prince and stretched him out on the sand, taking special care to pillow his head up high in the warm sunlight.

Great bells began to ring in the great white building, and a number of young girls came out into the garden. The little merman swam away behind some tall rocks that stuck out of the water. He covered his head and his shoulders with foam, and ducked down so that no one could see his face, and then he watched to see who would find the poor Prince.

In a little while one of the girls came upon him. She seemed frightened, but only for a minute; then she called more people. The merman watched the Prince regain consciousness, and smile at everyone around him. However, he did not smile at Triton, for he did not even know that he had saved him. The little merman felt very unhappy, and when the maidens led the young Prince away to the big building, he dived sadly down into the water and returned to his father's palace. He had always been quiet and wistful, and now he became much more so. His sisters asked him what he had seen on his first visit up to the surface, but he would not tell them a thing.

On many evenings and many mornings, Triton revisited the spot where he had left the Prince. He saw the fruit in the garden ripened and harvested, and he saw the snow on the high mountain melted away, but he did not see the Prince, so each time he came home sadder than when he had left. It was his one consolation to sit in his little garden and throw his arms about the beautiful marble statue that looked so much like the Prince. However, the merman took no care of his plants now. They overgrew the paths until the place was a wilderness, and their long stalks and leaves became so entangled in the branches of the tree that it cast a gloomy shade.

Finally, Triton couldn't bear it any longer. He told his secret to one of his sisters. Immediately, all the other sisters heard about it. No one else knew, except a few more merfolk who told no one - except their most intimate friends. One of these friends knew who the Prince was. She too had seen the birthday celebration on the ship. She knew where he came from and where his kingdom was.

"Come, little brother!" said the princesses. Arm in arm, they rose from the water in a long row, right in front of where they knew the Prince's palace stood. It was built of pale, glistening, golden sandstone with great marble staircases, one of which led down to the sea. Magnificent gilt domes rose above the roof, and between the pillars all around the building were marble statues that looked most lifelike. Through the clear glass of the lofty windows one could see into the splendid halls, with their costly silk hangings and tapestries, and walls covered with paintings that were delightful to behold. In the centre of the main hall, a large fountain played its columns of spray up to the glass-domed roof, through which the sun shone down on the water and upon the lovely plants that grew in the big basin.

Now that Triton knew where the Prince lived, many an evening and many a night he spent there in the sea. He swam much closer to shore than any of his sisters would dare venture, and he even went far up a narrow stream, under the splendid marble balcony that cast its long shadow in the water. Here he used to sit and watch the young Prince when he thought himself quite alone in the bright moonlight.

On many evenings the merman saw him sail out in his fine boat, with music playing and flags a-flutter. He would peep out through the green rushes, and if the wind blew his silver cape, anyone who saw it mistook it for a swan spreading its wings.

On many nights he saw the fishermen come out to sea with their torches, and heard them tell about how kind the young Prince was. This made the merman proud to think that it was he who had saved his life when he was buffeted about, half dead among the waves. And he thought of how softly the Prince's head had rested on his breast, and how tenderly he had kissed him, though he knew nothing of all this nor could he even dream of it.

It was while listening to the sailors one time that Triton learned the Prince's name, and for hours in bed back at the undersea palace, he would lie awake, repeatedly whispering, "Kronprinz Kristoph Niklaus Adolphus von Nosgoth."

Increasingly, Triton grew to like human beings, and more and more he longed to live amongst them. Their world seemed so much wider than his own, for they could skim over the sea in ships, and mount up into the lofty peaks high over the clouds, and their lands stretched out in woods and fields farther than the eye could see. There was so much he wanted to know. His sisters could not answer all his questions, so he asked his old grandmother, who knew about the 'upper world', which was what she said was the right name for the countries above the sea.

"If men aren't drowned," the little merman asked, "do they live on forever? Don't they die, as we do down here in the sea?"

"Yes, Triton" the old lady said, "they too must die, and their lifetimes are even shorter than ours. We can live to be three hundred years old, but when we perish we turn into mere foam on the sea, and haven't even a grave down here among our dear ones. We have no immortal soul, no life hereafter. We are like the green seaweed - once cut down, it never grows again. Human beings, on the contrary, have a soul which lives forever, long after their bodies have turned to clay. It rises through thin air, up to the shining stars. Just as we rise through the water to see the lands on earth, so men rise up to beautiful places unknown, which we shall never see."

"Why weren't _we_ given an immortal soul?" the little merman sadly asked. "I would gladly give up my three hundred years if I could be a human being only for a day, and later share in that heavenly realm."

"You must not think about that, Triton," said the old lady. "We fare much more happily and are much better off than the folk up there."

"Then I must also die and float as foam upon the sea, not hearing the music of the waves, and seeing neither the beautiful plants nor the red sun! Can't I do anything at all to win an immortal soul?"

"No," his grandmother answered, "not unless a human being loved you so much that you meant more to her than her father and mother. If her every thought and her whole heart cleaved to you so that she would let a clergyman join her right hand to yours and would promise to be faithful here and throughout all eternity, then her soul would dwell in your body, and you would share in the happiness of mankind. She would give you a soul and yet keep her own. However, that can never come to pass. The very thing that is your greatest defining feature here in the sea - your fish tail - would be considered ugly on land. They have such poor taste that to be thought handsome there you have to have two awkward props which they call legs."

The little merman sighed and looked unhappily at his fish tail.

"Come, let us be gay!" the Dowager Queen said. "Let us leap and bound throughout the three hundred years that we have to live. Surely that is time and to spare, and afterwards we shall be glad enough to rest in our graves. We are holding a court ball this evening."

This was a much more glorious affair than is ever to be seen on earth. The walls and the ceiling of the great ballroom were made of massive but transparent glass. Many hundreds of huge rose-red and grass-green shells stood on each side in rows, with the blue flames that burned in each shell illuminating the whole room and shining through the walls so clearly that it was quite bright in the sea outside. You could see the countless fish, great and small, swimming toward the glass walls. On some of them the scales gleamed purplish-red, while others were silver and gold. Across the floor of the hall ran a wide stream of water, and upon this the mermaids and mermen danced to their own entrancing songs. Such gorgeous voices are not to be heard among the people who live on land. The little merman sang, in a glorious, rich tenor, more fantastically than anyone else, and everyone applauded him. For a moment his heart was happy, because he knew he had the best voice of all, in the sea or on the land. However, his thoughts soon strayed to the world up above. Triton could not forget the charming Prinz Kristoph, nor his sorrow that he did not have an immortal soul like his. Therefore he stole out of his father's palace and, while everything there was song and gladness, he sat sadly in his own little garden.

Then he heard a bugle call through the water, and he thought, 'That must mean he is sailing up there, he whom I love more than my father or mother, he of whom I am always thinking, and in whose hands I would so willingly trust my lifelong happiness. I dare do anything to win him and to gain an immortal soul. While my sisters are dancing here, in my father's palace, I shall visit the sea witch of whom I have always been so afraid. Perhaps she will be able to advise me and help me.'

The little merman set out from his garden toward the whirlpools that raged in front of the witch's dwelling. He had never gone that way before. Nothing grew there, not even any seaweed. Bare and gray, the sands extended to the whirlpools, where, like roaring mill wheels, the waters whirled and snatched everything within their reach down to the bottom of the sea. Between these tumultuous whirlpools, Triton had to thread his way to reach the witch's waters, and then for a long stretch, the only trail lay through a hot seething mire, which the witch called her peat marsh. Beyond it, her house lay in the middle of a weird forest, where all the trees and shrubs were polyps, half animal and half plant. They looked like hundred-headed snakes growing out of the soil. All their branches were long, slimy arms, with fingers like wriggling worms. They squirmed, joint by joint, from their roots to their outermost tentacles, and whatever they could lay hold of they twined around and never let go. The little merman was terrified, and stopped at the edge of the forest. His heart thumped with fear and he nearly turned back, but then he remembered the Prince and the souls that men have, and he summoned his courage. He bound his brown shoulder-length locks closely about his head so that the polyps could not catch hold of them, folded his arms across his breast, and darted through the water like a fish, in amongst the slimy polyps that stretched out their writhing arms and fingers to seize him. He saw that every one of them held something that it had caught with its hundreds of little tentacles, and to which it clung as with strong hoops of steel. The white bones of men who had perished at sea and sunk to these depths could be seen in the polyps' arms. Ships' rudders, and seamen's chests, and the skeletons of land animals had also fallen into their clutches, but the most ghastly sight of all was a little mermaid, whom they had caught and strangled.

Triton reached a large muddy clearing in the forest, where big fat water snakes slithered about, showing their foul yellowish bellies. In the middle of this clearing was a house built of the bones of shipwrecked men, and there sat the sea witch, letting a toad eat out of her mouth just as we might feed sugar to a little canary bird. She called the ugly fat water snakes her little chickabiddies, and let them crawl and sprawl about on her spongy bosom.

"I know exactly what you want," said the sea witch. "It is very foolish of you, but just the same you shall have your way, for it will bring you to grief, my proud prince. You want to get rid of your fish tail and have two props instead, so that you can walk about like a human creature, and have the young Prince fall in love with you, and win him and an immortal soul besides." At this, the witch gave such a loud cackling laugh that the toad and the snakes were shaken to the ground, where they lay writhing.

"You are just in time," said the witch. "After the sun comes up tomorrow, a whole year would have to go by before I could be of any help to you. I shall compound you a draught, and before sunrise you must swim to the shore with it, seat yourself on dry land, and drink the draught down. Then your tail will divide and shrink until it becomes what the people on earth call a pair of strong, manly legs. However, it will hurt; it will feel as if a sharp sword slashed through you. Everyone who sees you will say that you are the most graceful human being they have ever laid eyes on, for you will keep your sure movement and no dancer will be able to lead as confidently as you. However, every step you take will feel as if you were treading upon knife blades so sharp that blood must flow. I am willing to help you, but are you willing to suffer all this?"

"Yes," the little merman said in a trembling voice, as he thought of the Prince and of gaining a human soul.

"Remember," said the witch, "once you have taken a human form, you can never be a merman again. You can never come back through the waters to your sisters, or to your father's palace. And if you do not win the love of the Prince so completely that for your sake he forgets his father and mother, cleaves to you with his every thought and his whole heart, and lets the priest join your hands in marriage, then you will win no immortal soul. If he marries someone else, your heart will break on the very next morning, and you will become foam of the sea."

"I shall take that risk," said Triton, but he turned as pale as death.

"Also, you will have to pay me," said the witch, "and it is no trifling price that I'm asking. You have the best voice of anyone down here at the bottom of the sea, and while I don't doubt that you would like to captivate the Prince with it, you must give this voice to me. I will take the very best thing that you have in return for my sovereign draught. I must pour my own blood in it to make the drink as sharp as a two-edged sword."

"But if you take my voice," asked the little merman, "what will be left to me?"

"Your strong, handsome form," the witch told him, "your assured movements, and your eloquent eyes. With these you can easily enchant a human heart. Well, have you lost your courage? Sing a melody and I shall trap your voice. I'll have my price, and you shall have the potent draught."

"Go ahead," said Triton.

The witch hung her cauldron over the flames, to brew the draught. "Cleanliness is a good thing," she said as she tied her snakes in a knot and scoured out the pot with them. Then she pricked herself in the chest and let her black blood splash into the cauldron. Steam swirled up from it, in such ghastly shapes that anyone would have been terrified by them. The witch constantly threw new ingredients into the cauldron, and it started to boil with a sound like that of a crocodile shedding tears. When the draught was ready at last, it looked as clear as the purest water.

"There's your draught," said the witch. And she trapped the voice of the little merman, who now was mute and could neither sing nor talk.

"If the polyps should pounce on you when you swim back through my wood," the witch said, "just spill a drop of this brew upon them and their tentacles will break into a thousand pieces."

However, there was no need of that, for the polyps curled up in terror as soon as they saw the bright draught. It glittered in Triton's hand as if it were a shining star, so he soon traversed the forest, the marsh, and the place of raging whirlpools. He could see his father's palace. The lights had been snuffed out in the great ballroom, and doubtless everyone in the palace was asleep, but he dared not go near them, now that he was stricken mute and was leaving his home forever. His heart felt as if it would break with grief. He tip-toed into the garden, took one flower from each of his sisters' little plots, waved a thousand times towards the palace, and then mounted up through the dark blue sea.

The sun had not yet risen when he saw the Prince's palace. As he climbed a splendid marble staircase, the moon was shining clear. The little merman swallowed the bitter, fiery draught, and it was as if a two-edged sword struck through his entire body. He blacked out and lay there as if he were dead. When the sun rose over the sea, he awoke and felt a flash of pain, but directly in front of him stood the handsome young Prince, gazing at him with his coal-black eyes. Lowering his gaze, he saw that his fish tail was gone, and that he had the strongest pair of slightly tanned legs any young man could hope to have. However, he was naked, so he used his hands to cover the strange new organs that were above where his urogenital opening had once been.

Prinz Kristoph asked who he was, and how he came to be there. Triton's deep blue eyes looked at him kindly but very sadly, for he could not speak. Then his arm was taken and he was led into the palace. Every footstep felt as if he were walking on the blades and points of sharp knives, just as the witch had foretold, but he gladly endured it. He moved as assuredly as a Kurfürst as he walked beside the Prince. He and all others who saw Triton marveled at the magnificence of his stride.

Once clad in the rich silk and velvet garments that were provided for him, he was the most handsome and gracious person in all the palace, though he was mute and could neither sing nor speak. A troupe of gorgeous entertainers, attired in silk and cloth of gold, came to sing before the Prince and his royal parents, the König and Königin of Nosgoth. One of them sang more grandly than all the others, and when the Prince smiled at him and clapped his hands, the little merman felt very unhappy, for he knew that he himself used to sing much more grandly.

"Oh," he thought, "if he only knew that I parted with my voice forever so that I could be near him."

Graceful dancers now began to dance to the most wonderful music. Then the little merman danced steps and made leaps that no one in the court of Nosgoth had ever seen before, then, with his arms crossed over his breast, he dropped into a squat and his feet flew outwards as he continued to imitate a dance he'd seen the sailors on an Austro-Hungarian ship perform during a long watch. No one had ever danced so well. Each movement set off his handsomeness to better and better advantage, and his eyes spoke more directly to the heart than any of the singing entertainers could do. He charmed everyone, and especially the Prince, who called him his dear little foundling. He danced time and again, though every time his feet touched the floor, he felt as if he were treading on sharp-edged steel. The Prince said he would keep him with him always, and that he was to have a velvet pillow to sleep on outside his door.

He had a page's suit made for Triton, so that he could go with him on horseback without spoiling his finer clothes. They would ride through the sweet scented woods, where the green boughs brushed his shoulders, and where the little birds sang among the fluttering leaves.

He climbed up high mountains with the Prince, and though his painful feet bled so that all could see it, he only laughed and followed him on until they could see the clouds driving far below, like a flock of birds in flight to distant lands.

At home in the Prince's palace, while the others slept at night, the little merman would go down the broad marble steps to cool his burning feet in the cold seawater, and then he would recall those who lived beneath the sea. One night, his sisters came by, arm in arm, singing sadly as they breasted the waves. When he held out his hands toward them, they knew who he was, and told him how unhappy he had made them all. They came to see him every night after that, and once, far, far out to sea, he saw his old grandmother, who had not been up to the surface for many a year. With her was Poseidon, with his crown upon his head. They stretched out their hands to him, but they did not venture so near the land as his sisters had.

Day after day he became more dear to the Prince, who loved him as one would love a good little child, but he never thought of making him his Prinzgemahl. Yet he had to be his husband or he would never have an immortal soul, and on the morning after Prinz Kristoph's wedding Triton would turn into foam on the waves.

"Don't you love me best of all?" the little merman's eyes seemed to question him, when he hugged him and gave him reassurances that he was, and always would be, his best friend and confidant.

"Yes, you are most dear to me," said the Prince, "for you have the kindest heart. You love me more than anyone else does, and your manner is so much like that of a young girl I once saw but never shall find again. I was on a ship that was wrecked, and the waves cast me ashore near a holy temple, where many young women performed the rituals. The youngest of them found me beside the sea and saved my life. Though I saw her no more than twice, she is the only person in all the world whom I could love. However, you are so much like her that you almost replace the memory of her in my heart. She belongs to that holy temple, therefore it is my good fortune that I have you. We shall never part."

'Alas, he doesn't know that it was I who saved his life,' Triton thought. 'I carried him over the sea to the garden where the temple stands. I hid behind the foam and watched to see if anyone would come. I saw the pretty maid he loves better than me.' A sigh was the only sign of his deep distress, for a merman cannot cry. 'He says that the maid belongs to the holy temple. She will never come out into the world, so they will never see each other again. It is I who will care for him, love him, and give all my life to him.'

Now rumors arose that the Prince was to wed the beautiful daughter of a neighboring King, and for this reason he was having a superb ship made ready to sail. The rumor ran that the Prince's real interest in visiting the neighboring kingdom was to see the King's daughter, and that he was to travel with a lordly retinue. The little merman shook his head and smiled, for he knew the Prince's thoughts far better than anyone else did.

"I am forced to make this journey," he told Triton. "I must visit the beautiful Princess, for this is my parents' wish, but they would not have me bring her home as my bride against my own will, and I can never love her. She does not have the kind and patient manner of the lovely maiden in the temple, as you do, and if I were to choose someone to marry, I would sooner choose you, my dear mute foundling with those telling eyes of yours." And he kissed the little merman on the forehead, trailed his fingers through his hair, and laid his head against his heart so that he came to dream of mortal happiness and an immortal soul.

"I trust you aren't afraid of the sea, my silent child," he said, as they boarded the magnificent vessel that was to carry them to the land of the neighboring King. And he told him stories of storms, of ships becalmed, of strange deep-sea fish, and of the wonders that divers have seen. Triton smiled at such stories, for no one on land knew about the bottom of the sea as well as he did.

In the clear moonlight, when everyone except the man at the helm was asleep, the little merman sat on the side of the ship gazing down through the transparent water, and fancied he could catch glimpses of his father's palace. On the topmost tower stood his old grandmother, wearing her silver crown and looking up at the keel of the ship through the rushing waves. Then his sisters rose to the surface, looked at him sadly, and wrung their white hands. Triton smiled and waved, trying to let them know that all went well and that he was happy. However, along came the cabin boy, and his sisters dived out of sight so quickly that the boy supposed the flash of white he had seen was merely foam on the sea.

Next morning the ship came in to the harbor of the neighboring King's glorious city. All the church bells chimed, and trumpets were sounded from all the high towers, while the soldiers lined up with flying banners and glittering bayonets. Every day had a new festivity, as one ball or levee followed another, but the Princess was still to appear. They said she was being brought up in some far-away sacred temple, where she was learning every royal virtue. However, she came at last.

The little merman was curious to see how beautiful this Princess was, and he had to grant that a more exquisite figure he had never seen. The Princess's skin was clear and fair, and behind the long, dark lashes, her deep blue eyes were smiling and devoted.

"It was you!" the Prince cried. "You are the one who saved me when I lay like a dead man beside the sea." He clasped the blushing bride of his choice in his arms. "Oh, I am happier than a man should be!" he told his little merman. "My fondest dream - that which I never dared to hope - has come true. You will share in my great joy, for you love me more than anyone does."

The little merman kissed his hand and felt that his heart was beginning to break. For the morning after Prinz Kristoph's wedding day would see him dead and turned to watery foam.

Over the folowing weeks, all the church bells rang out, and heralds rode through the streets to announce the wedding. Upon every altar, sweet-scented oils were burned in costly silver lamps. The priests swung their censers, the bride and the bridegroom practiced joining their hands, and the bishop practiced blessing their marriage. The little merman, clothed in velvet and cloth of gold, sat in the foremost pew on the right side of the central aisle, but he was deaf to the wedding march and blind to the rehearsals of the holy ritual. His thought turned on his last night upon earth, and on all he had lost in this world.

Then one evening, during yet another celebratory ball, Prinz Kristoph realised something, so he turned to his bride and stated, "When I first met you in this, your country, I initially thought you to be the one who had saved me from the sea because you were the first person I saw afterwards, but I have just come to realise that it cannot possibly be so. Unless my memory serves me incorrectly, your clothes were perfectly dry from top to toe, so you could not have been the one who saved me from drowning and laid me on that beach. I am sorry, but my search must continue. I do not hate you, but my heart already belongs to another. I will make sure the bill for whatever has been spent here is paid if you send it to the treasury in my parents' königsreich."

In tears through disappointment, the beautiful Princess nevertheless wished him well as she kissed him goodbye, for she was a sweet maiden with no malice or hatred in her heart, and she should not be short of suitors since her father was the king of Norway and Sweden, making her a most attractive match for any young prince.

After successfully calling off the wedding, Prinz Kristoph boarded his ship with the little merman and sailed homewards, where he spent the next several weeks in contemplation of who his true rescuer could be.

"I have no hope of ever finding the one who saved me now, my silent child," he would wistfully murmur. "So I find myself entertaining the thought of marrying you, although my parents believe it would be a shameful thing to see me bind myself to another man in holy matrimony. Yet the thought plagues me more with every passing day."

With that, the Prince would kiss Triton on the forehead, as was his habit, before getting up to take care of some pressing state business.

The following spring, it just so happened that one of the bitches that were kept to supply the palace with hunting dogs every year had one of the pups from her most recent litter go scampering off on his own, and after checking the rest were still asleep, she chased after him, catching up just as he started having difficulties in the shallow waves along the shore. Just as Prinz Kristoph and the little merman, who had followed, got there, the bitch succeeded in rescuing her pup, then her feet were swept from under her by a particularly large wave, and she was dragged out to where she started to struggle in the undertow.

For several seconds, both the Prince and Triton stood stock still, unsure what to do. The Prince could not swim, and the little merman would turn into foam if he tried to return to the sea. However, he then ran forwards anyway, reasoning that he might get just a few moments before he met his fate, and it was better to use that time to try and save the dog rather than just stand around and watch her drowning. Thus with his mind made up, the merman threw himself into the waves, and to his great surprise, did not immediately dissolve, so he grabbed the bitch by the scruff of her neck and put his other arm around her, helping her reach the shore in this way. As he made to stand so he could walk out of the water, however, he found that he could not because he no longer had legs with which to do so.

"Why do you not come towards me, my silent child? Such bravery and kindness surely deserve affection," said the Prince.

All Triton was able to do was look up at him with his expressive blue eyes as he continued to drag himself through the surf of the Ostsee, and Prinz Kristoph immediately began to berate himself.

"Of course, you will be tired after your daring rescue. Here, allow me to help you."

He walked through the waves, then stopped short in confusion as he saw the tattered remains of Triton's velvet breeches and what was now beneath them.

"Of course!" he suddenly said at last. "It was you all along. Nobody else could swim well enough to save me but one of the merfolk."

He gathered the little merman tenderly into his arms and walked back to the shore, reaching it just as some servants of the palace arrived to find out where he had gone.

"It is a monster!" one of them exclaimed. "Put it down, my prince, before it hurts you!"

"He is _not_ a monster," the Prince replied, "he is the mute foundling who dances so well as to win the admiration of everyone. Furthermore, he is the one who saved me from the shipwreck, and the man to whom I have sworn my heart and soul."

With that, Prinz Kristoph gave the little merman a fervent kiss on the lips that was eagerly returned, and the servants went into a frenzy, accusing Triton of being a witch and a monster that had cast a spell upon their prince. All of a sudden, however, the hubbub ceased as Poseidon himself arose from the sea in all his terrible majesty.

"What is going on here?" he demanded. "Why do you bother my son and his lover so?"

Greatly frightened by this, the servants all fled, the bitch rapidly following with her pup dangling from her mouth by the scruff of his neck, then the sea king addressed his only son.

"I have made some changes in my kingdom," he said. "No more shall any of the merfolk suffer to find happiness as you have."

With that, the sea king raised his trident and waved it over the new couple several times. Triton felt his tail grow back into legs, but this time the change wasn't painful, and once he could stand, his feet did not hurt the slightest bit.

"You are now able to change between legs and a tail at will," Poseidon announced, "and I have conferred the same gift on your Prince so that you may visit us at any time during your shortened span on this earth. I was also able to retrieve your voice from the sea-hag that you may also pleasure the ears of the air-dwellers with your marvellous voice."

At this, Triton bubbled over with such a fervour of gratitude that Prinz Kristoph had to calm and quiet him so the sea king could say one final thing.

"Remember, visit us often. I wish to see my grandchildren one day."

With that, Poseidon dived back into the sea, and Prinz Kristoph and the little merman walked hand in hand back to the palace, where the Prince informed his parents of his decision.

"But Kristoph," said the Königin, "you are our only son. How can you hope to have an heir if you marry this boy?"

"It's all right," Triton said, startling his future parents-in-law with the evidence that he was no longer mute. "If what my father said is anything to go by, there _will_ be heirs to your throne one day, despite my gender."

With their only legitimate concern now dealt with, the König and Königin of Nosgoth could no longer stand in the way of their son's happiness, so gave their blessing, and after two weeks of celebrations and rehearsals, Kronprinz Kristoph and his Prinzgemahl were finally bound in holy matrimony, and such was the love they showed in their first kiss as a married couple that even the archbishop who was officiating had tears of joy in his eyes.

Over the the next several years, true to Poseidon's word, Prinzen Kristoph and Triton miraculously had many children together, and every year, they would take their sons and daughters, who could also grow tails, down to the sea palace to visit their maternal grandfather, their aunts, and their great-grandmother. It was during the visit to show off the first grandchild that Triton learned he had a new step-parent in the person of a young merman named Nerites, who was not much older than Triton himself. However, despite this, he was clearly in the second trimester of his own pregnancy, and was practically glowing with it.

Every year thereafter, Prinzen Kristoph and Triton's children spent two weeks playing with their uncle and being spoilt rotten by their aunts, until the time came that the couple were called to Paradise.

To this day, although no trace remains of Nosgoth since its absorption into Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Deutschland, there is still evidence of the events of my tale to be found. Although the descendants of Prinzen Kristoph and Triton lost the ability to transform their legs into tails long ago, they can still be seen utilising their ability to survive underwater as free-divers, people who are able to dive to astonishing depths for several minutes at a time without the aid of air tanks. So the next time you witness the feats of these amazing human beings, perhaps you'll think of Triton, one of their ancestors.

**Author's Note:**

> Copyright © 2013 Romersa's Protégé. Individuals and groups are free to copy and share this work for all purposes except large scale distribution, subject to credit being given and any derivatives being released under the same or a similar licence. All other rights reserved.  
> Adapted from 'The Little Mermaid'; Public Domain.


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